Determining the capacity utilization of parking garages and paid parking facilities is very important for their operators and in terms of traffic control in cities. Sensors that transmit the status of the parking facility to a monitoring location are therefore used in order to monitor parking facilities. The status normally is detected either via passive sensors or by way of emitting sensors, or via a combination of these concepts. With conventional systems, this detection functions only with delineated parking spaces having a defined number of vehicles (normally one vehicle per parking space).